In an exclusive interaction with MediaBrief, Aishwarya Gupta — Chief Marketing Officer, Jainam; Neha Bagchi — Head of Marketing, DTDC Express; Rathin Lahiri — Head – Marketing & CSR, SBI General Insurance; and Vaishali Nautiyal — Director & Head – Markets and Brand Communication, Dhruva Advisors speak about how social media is reshaping consumer engagement, platform strategy, content creation, influencer marketing, and brand trust.
Social media has transformed the way brands engage with consumers, turning marketing from a one-way broadcast into an ongoing dialogue. Whether it is helping investors make informed decisions, showcasing the human side of logistics, building trust in insurance, or strengthening thought leadership in professional services, social platforms have become central to modern brand-building.
For brands operating in highly trust-dependent sectors, social media has fundamentally altered how consumers discover information and engage with companies. According to Aishwarya Gupta, Chief Marketing Officer, Jainam, the transformation goes far beyond content distribution. “Social media has fundamentally changed consumer behaviour and the relationship between brands and consumers. Marketing has shifted from one way communication to continuous conversations. Consumers today expect brands to be more accessible, responsive and authentic.
“In financial services,” Gupta says, “social media has transformed how people discover, evaluate and consume information. Investors are exposed to diverse perspectives before making decisions, making these platforms critical touchpoints where opinions are shaped, trust is earned, and informed financial decisions takes shape.
“As a result, brands carry greater responsibility to communicate in ways that builds trust, simplifies complexity and adds value. For us, social media is a platform for education, credibility and long term relationship building. Every piece of content has the potential to shape investor behaviour, making credibility as important as visibility,” says Gupta.
A similar evolution is evident in logistics, where brand storytelling now matters as much as operational excellence. Neha Bagchi, Head of Marketing, DTDC Express, says, “For us, the biggest shift has been in how we communicate. Earlier, we’d talk about our services, our network and why customers should choose us. Today, that approach simply doesn’t work on social media.”
Bagchi adds, “People don’t come to social media to hear brands talk about themselves. They’re there to relax, be entertained, learn something new or simply scroll through content they enjoy. Nobody wakes up thinking, ‘Let me see which logistics company has posted today.’ That means we have to earn our place in someone’s feed. We have to speak their language, tell stories they can relate to and create content that adds value instead of just talking about ourselves.”
Bagchi adds that social media has also helped DTDC make an often invisible industry more relatable. “Social Media gives us the opportunity to change that perception. It allows us to tell the stories behind the deliveries, showcase the innovation and people that make commerce possible, and build an emotional connection with audiences long before they need to ship a parcel.
She continues, “That’s really how social media has changed our approach. It has made us focus less on broadcasting our services and more on becoming part of conversations that people actually care about.”
For insurers, the change has been equally profound. Rathin Lahiri, Head – Marketing & CSR, SBI General Insurance, believes social media has transformed brands from message broadcasters into active participants in consumer conversations.
He says, “We are not consuming social media anymore, we are addicted to it. For brands the biggest change social media has brought about is the shift from one way communication to conversations and real time consumer feedback. Brands today are no longer just broadcasting messages; they have to listen, engage, and responding to consumers in real time.”
“For us,” Lahiri says, “social media has become an important space to understand consumer expectations, build trust, and create meaningful interactions beyond traditional marketing. It allows us as a brand to showcase our personality, share authentic stories, build communities around shared interests and values and share a lot more regional and nuanced stories vs broadcasting 1 common campaign to cater to everyone.
“The other significant change,” he says, “is the access to consumer insights. Every interaction, comment, and discussion provides a better understanding of what matters to audiences. This has made marketing and our service more agile and consumer-focused, helping brands like SBI General Insurance create experiences that are more relevant, relatable, and impactful.”
Vaishali Nautiyal, Director & Head – Markets and Brand Communication, Dhruva Advisors, says perceptions are increasingly shaped long before the first client interaction.
“Honestly, it’s made everything faster and less forgiving. Clients used to evaluate a firm through meetings, relationships, word of mouth, credentials decks, referrals. Now they’ve formed a view before they’ve picked up the phone based on what your people are saying online, how quickly you respond to something happening in the market, whether your thinking feels current.
“For us,” Nautiyal says, “that’s meant shifting from thinking about visibility to thinking about credibility. Those aren’t the same thing. You can be very visible and completely unpersuasive. Social media has made that gap much harder to hide.”
The Platform Question: One Size No Longer Fits All
While marketers agree on the importance of social media, the platforms driving impact vary by sector and audience.
Aishwarya Gupta of Jainam argues that modern consumer journeys are fragmented across platforms, making a platform-agnostic approach essential. “Today’s consumers engage with brands across multiple platforms, with each platform serving a distinct purpose in their decision making journey.
He continues, “As marketers, our role is to understand the unique role each platform plays in building awareness, engagement, consideration, intent, and trust.”
“For a financial services brand, no single platform can address every objective,” says Gupta. “Different platforms create value at different stages of customer journey. We therefore focus on being present where the context aligns with the customer’s mindset, enabling them to discover relevant information, build confidence, validate their thinking, and take informed financial decisions.As consumer behaviour continues to evolve, our platform strategy evolves alongside it. Our objective is platform-agnostic: delivering the right message to the right audience, in the right context, at the right moment to create meaningful impact.”
For DTDC, however, Instagram currently occupies a central role because of its ability to connect with younger audiences and entrepreneurs. Neha Bagchi says, “We’ve been around for 35 years, so we’re already a trusted household name. Our legacy is one of our greatest strengths. It has given us a strong foundation, and we’re building on that trust to create a brand that’s just as relevant for the next generation.
We often say we’re a 35-year-young company because while we’ve been around for decades, we’ve always kept up with the times. That’s what has helped us stay relevant for 35 years, and it’s the same mindset that shapes how we approach marketing today.
“Instagram is where today’s conversations are happening,” says Bagchi. “It’s where young entrepreneurs are building brands, creators are influencing purchase decisions and the next generation of consumers is discovering companies they want to engage with. That’s an audience we want to grow with. “
“For us,” she says, being on Instagram isn’t just about being visible today. It’s about staying relevant for the next 35 years. We want the next generation to see DTDC not just as the company they’ve heard of, but as a modern, innovative brand that’s helping power the future of commerce. That’s why Instagram plays such an important role in our marketing mix. It’s where we’re building familiarity with the audiences who will shape the future of business and consumer behaviour.”
Rathin Lahiri of SBI General Insurance takes a more diversified view. “There is no single platform that defines a brand’s entire social media strategy today. Each platform has evolved differently, with its own audience behaviour, content formats, and ways of driving engagement. The key is understanding where consumers are actively engaging and building conversations around those moments.”
“At SBI General Insurance,” Lahiri says, “social media plays an important role in how we educate, engage, and connect with consumers. Platforms like Instagram help us simplify complex insurance conversations through relatable content, while LinkedIn enables us to share industry perspectives, build credibility, and engage with a professional audience.”
“The role of social media has expanded beyond awareness; it is now a space for discovery, trust-building, and ongoing conversations. While digital has become a larger part of our marketing approach, the focus remains on creating relevant content that reaches consumers in the formats they naturally engage with,” adds Lahiri.
For Dhruva Advisors, the answer is unequivocal. Nautiyal says: “LinkedIn, and it’s not close. That’s where our audiences are business leaders, policymakers, investors. It’s where decisions get influenced before they get made.”
She adds, “What I find most interesting about LinkedIn is how it’s collapsed the distance between a firm’s reputation and an individual’s credibility. At Dhruva Advisors, our experts are the brand. When one of our partners posts a sharp take on a regulatory development, that travels into rooms we’d never reach through traditional corporate communication. That’s genuinely valuable and it’s very hard to manufacture.”
Trust, Authenticity and the Rise of Human-Centric Content
When asked about the social media trends and consumer behaviours shaping their marketing strategies today, Aishwarya Gupta, Chief Marketing Officer, Jainam, says, “The biggest shift today is in consumer expectations and the way they consume financial content. Consumers expect relevance, authenticity and immediacy. While attention spans are becoming shorter and expectations from brands continue to rise, in categories like financial services, consumers validate information through multiple sources before acting.
He adds, “Communities and peer conversations have become as influential as brand communication in shaping opinions and building trust. Short-form video continues to drive discovery by making complex financial concepts easy to understand, while expert-led content is becoming important as consumers seek informed perspectives over opinions. As AI accelerates content creation and information becomes more abundant, differentiation will be driven less by content volume and more by the quality of insights, credibility of the source and authenticity of the message.
“For brands,” Gupta says, “this reinforces the need to maintain a consistent presence across relevant touchpoints. Trust is not built through a single interaction, it is earned through repeated, coherent experiences that reinforce the brand narrative, strengthen credibility and progressively build consumer confidence over time.
“As a result, the focus shifts beyond simply creating content to creating value. The opportunity lies in delivering research-backed insights, transparent communication and investor education that enable informed decision-making while establishing the brand as a trusted and credible financial partner,” says Gupta.
“One thing we’ve realised is that people follow brands for only a few reasons. Either you’re a great page to follow, a great partner to have, or a great place to work. Those three ideas have become the pillars of our marketing strategy,” says Neha Bagchi — Head of Marketing, DTDC Express.
Elaborating on this, Bagchi says, “First, we want to create content that people genuinely enjoy consuming. Not because they’re looking for a logistics company, but because the stories are interesting, relatable or useful. Second, we want businesses to see DTDC as a trusted partner for growth. Whether it’s an entrepreneur shipping their first order or an enterprise expanding globally, our content should demonstrate how we help businesses scale.”
“And third,” she says, “we want people to see DTDC as a great place to work. The culture, the people and the values behind the brand are just as important as the services we offer. Increasingly, customers, partners and future employees all form opinions about a company through its social presence. That’s why our strategy isn’t built around promoting services every day. It’s built around creating a brand that people want to associate with.”
Rathin Lahiri, Head of Marketing & CSR, SBI General Insurance, says, “One of the biggest shifts we are seeing is that consumers today are looking for relevance, authenticity, and trust in the brands they engage with. Social media has moved beyond being just a communication platform; it has become a space where consumers discover brands, seek information, and build long-term relationships.
“For a category like insurance,” he says, “trust and reliability are especially important because consumers are making decisions around protection, security, and their future needs. This is why brands need to communicate in a way that feels simple, transparent, and relatable rather than relying only on product-led messaging.
“We believe that trust is built through honest, consistent and meaningful conversations with consumers. Our recent association with Pankaj Tripathi as our brand ambassador is an extension of this belief. He represents qualities like trust, simplicity, and reliability, values that strongly resonate with consumers and are especially important in a category like insurance, where people look for confidence and assurance in the brands they choose.
“The rise of short-form content, personalised communication, and community-driven conversations is further changing how brands engage, but the core remains the same, building credibility and trust,” adds Lahiri.
“The biggest shift I’ve watched is audiences getting better at detecting when an organisation has nothing real to say. Polished content used to be enough. It really isn’t anymore. People can feel the difference between a firm that has a point of view and one that’s just staying active,” Vaishali Nautiyal, Director & Head Markets and Brand Communication, Dhruva Advisors.
She continues, “Related to that trust has moved from institutions to individuals. People follow experts, not logos. So executive visibility has gone from being a nice-to-have to being central to how a firm builds reputation. And attention is just genuinely scarce now. Content that doesn’t help someone think better or decide faster gets ignored. That’s raised the bar considerably for what’s worth putting out.
Influencers vs Advertising: A False Choice?
The debate between influencer marketing and platform advertising continues to dominate boardroom discussions. Yet the executives largely reject the notion that brands must choose one over the other. Gupta believes the strongest results come when both channels work together: “”Influencer led marketing and platform advertising play fundamentally different roles in building a brand. Platform advertising provides scale, consistency, and the ability to build distinctive brand assets over time. Influencers, on the other hand, bring authenticity, relatability, and the ability to participate in existing communities and conversations.”
“The stronger returns don’t come from choosing one over the other. They come from understanding the role each plays within a broader marketing strategy,” says Gupta. Brands create disproportionate value when these channels work together to build both mental availability and consumer trust.
“Ultimately,” he says, “consumers don’t experience brands through individual channels, they experience them through every interaction they have with the brand. Marketing effectiveness, therefore, isn’t determined by the channel itself. It is determined by how well every touchpoint reinforces the same brand promise while delivering relevance, clarity, confidence and value throughout the customer journey.”
Bagchi echoes that view. She says, “It’s not about choosing one over the other because they solve different problems. Influencers are incredibly effective when you’re trying to reach a new audience. They’ve already built communities that trust their voice, so they can introduce your brand to people who may never have discovered it otherwise. For brands looking to enter a new category, launch a product or reach younger audiences, that’s a huge advantage.”
She continues, “Platform advertising, on the other hand, gives you scale and precision. It helps you reach the right audience at the right time, optimise campaigns in real time and measure performance much more closely. The strongest marketing strategies today don’t treat these as competing channels. They work best together. An influencer can spark discovery and conversation, while platform advertising can amplify that message and drive consistent results.”
Ultimately,” Bagchi says, “consumers don’t think in terms of channels. They remember brands that are relevant, authentic and deliver on the promise they make. That’s where the real return comes from.”
Lahiri adds that trust-based sectors particularly benefit from combining precision targeting with credible voices. Elaborating on this, he says, “I don’t think it is a question of choosing one over the other; both play different and important roles in today’s marketing ecosystem. Platform advertising helps brands reach the right audiences at scale, with the ability to measure performance and optimise campaigns based on real-time insights.”
“At the same time,” he adds, “influencer-led marketing has become increasingly relevant because consumers today value authenticity and relatability. People often connect more strongly with voices they trust, especially when the content feels genuine and addresses their needs.
“For a category like insurance,” Lahiri says, “where trust is a key driver, building credibility is just as important as creating awareness. The strongest approach is a balanced one which uses the reach and precision of digital advertising while leveraging trusted voices that can make brand conversations more human.”
For Nautiyal, however, influence increasingly resides within organisations themselves. She says, “It depends on what you’re trying to do, but broadly people have gotten very good at ignoring advertising and very selective about who they trust. That shift has real implications for where money should go.
“Advertising still has a role,” she says. “Precision, scale, reach those things matter. But it works better when it’s amplifying something people already want to engage with, not substituting for it.”
“For professional services, the more interesting question is about your own people,” says Nautiyal. “The partner who posts something genuinely insightful on a Monday morning that’s influence. It costs nothing to place and it reaches exactly the right people. I’ve seen that move reputation faster than a media buy. So for us, the priority is making sure our experts are visible, credible, and saying things worth reading.”
What If Social Media Didn’t Exist?
Social media has become so deeply embedded in modern marketing that imagining its absence is no easy task. Yet, when asked how their brands would approach product discovery, customer engagement, and marketing without it, Aishwarya Gupta — Chief Marketing Officer, Jainam, says, “Social media has transformed the speed and scale at which brands can engage with consumers. However, the fundamentals of brand building remain the same.”
“For a financial services brand,” he says, “trust and relevance have always been the foundation of customer relationships. They are built through consistent experiences, meaningful interactions and sustained engagement over time across multiple platforms.
He adds, “Even before the rise of social media, financial brands relied on investor education, expert led interactions, communities, events, partnerships and relationship building initiatives to establish credibility and earn consumer trust. Social media has amplified these efforts while the underlying principles of building trust and credibility remain unchanged.”
Gupta adds, “Our approach has always been rooted in building a connected brand experience across multiple touchpoints. Social media is an important part of that ecosystem because it enables us to communicate faster, engage with investors in real time and make educational content more accessible. It has strengthened product discovery and customer engagement; it is one of many channels through which we build relationships with investors.
“If social media did not exist, our philosophy would remain unchanged, even though the channels of engagement may have been different. We would continue to focus on creating trust, fostering long-term relationships and delivering value wherever our customers choose to engage with us,” says the Jainam CMO.
Neha Bagchi, Head of Marketing, DTDC Express points to DTDC’s long-standing network of channel partners as proof that communities can exist beyond digital platforms. She says, “Honestly, we wouldn’t have to rethink our approach as much as people might expect because that’s how DTDC was built.”
She continues, “Long before social media existed, our biggest strength was our community. Today, that community is made up of over 16,500 channel partners who have grown alongside us over the years. They’re not just partners who represent our brand; they’re entrepreneurs who have built their own dreams with DTDC. Every milestone we achieve is one they celebrate, because our growth has always been intertwined with theirs. That’s the kind of advocacy that no marketing campaign can replicate. It comes from shared ambition, trust and years of growing together.”
“We would continue investing in that community, strengthening customer relationships and creating experiences that people naturally want to recommend. Social media has simply given those stories a much larger stage,” says Bagchi. “For us, marketing has never been about choosing between digital and offline. It’s always been about building trust. Social media has just helped us scale that trust.”
Rathin Lahiri — Head – Marketing & CSR, SBI General Insurance believes brands would lose a critical avenue for real-time engagement and consumer understanding. “It is difficult to imagine today’s marketing landscape without social media because it has become such an integral part of how brands and consumers connect. Earlier, brand communication was largely about reaching audiences with a message, but social media has made it a two-way conversation.”
He adds, “For a brand like SBI General Insurance, social media has helped us make insurance conversations simpler and more accessible. Insurance is a category built on trust, and these platforms allow us to educate consumers, share relevant information, and build familiarity over time.
“Without social media,” Lahiri says, “brands would have fewer opportunities to understand consumer needs instantly and create personalised engagement. Today, consumers expect brands to be present, responsive, and transparent. Social media has enabled brands to move beyond just visibility and build stronger, more meaningful relationships with their audiences.”
Meanwhile, Vaishali Nautiyal, Director & Head Markets and Brand Communication, Dhruva Advisors reflects on the acceleration social media has brought to reputation-building. She says, “We’d be slower, more expensive, and heavily dependent on who you happened to sit next to at an industry dinner.”
“The fundamentals wouldn’t change relationships, expertise, trust. But the infrastructure for building all of that would look very different,” says Nautiyal. “Conferences, publications, referrals, direct outreach. Those channels still matter. But social media has compressed something that used to take years into something that can happen in months if you’re consistent and you actually have something to say. The firms that understood that early have a real advantage now.”
If there is one lesson emerging from these conversations, it is that social media’s role has evolved far beyond awareness and reach. Whether it is helping investors make informed decisions, humanising logistics, simplifying insurance, or shaping corporate reputation, the medium now sits at the heart of how brands build trust.
The age of broadcasting is over. The era of continuous conversation has arrived—and the brands winning today are the ones listening as much as they are speaking.
